


Loss of Ache by New Ache Won

by Siguna



Series: A Memory of Light [1]
Category: Hellboy (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Asgard, Crossover, Idun's apples, Jotun!Loki, Loki Silvertongue, M/M, Nuada Silverlance, Odin's A+ Parenting, SilverPrinces, Thunder Dolt moment, lots of silver, Álfheimr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siguna/pseuds/Siguna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki doesn’t regret Midgard, this he knows, nor will he ever, but – sometimes he thinks, bitterly, that he would have had things come to anything but this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss of Ache by New Ache Won

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://hiddlememes.tumblr.com/post/34637128827/littleleap-here-is-my-interview-with-tom) is an interview with Tom Hiddleston in which he reveals that Jeremy Renner once said to him that Loki just needs to get laid (with a cute little Renner impression by Tom). This fic is very slightly inspired by that and more driven by the fact that I have a lot of Nuada/Loki feels. The title is paraphrased from a line from King Richard's deposition scene in Shakespeare's Richard II.

There’s something nice about the icy stone of the ground, revolting as it is. Loki coughs feebly against the padding of his muzzle and twitches his head.  He wonders if Asgard’s deepmost dungeons are normally so cold or if this is Odin’s idea of satirical punishment. Both, perhaps, the first complimenting the second. His head twitches again, trying to settle more comfortably against the stone, but the muzzle leaves little margin. His neck aches constantly. As does his jaw against the steel, and with each day his entire body for lack of sustenance. He hasn’t moved in a month.

He shivers, but not for the cold. The cold he doesn’t mind, in this skin. His Jotun form has been quick to take over, a result of his strength and magic both draining or the temperature or both. His very skull is erupting with the push of Jotun horns growing through, and his head screams with the pain while his mouth cannot. He whimpers and shakes and periodically convulses. The more he thrashes about on the ground the icier it becomes.

Sometimes he falls into hazy, frozen snatches of sleep. Cold still, but the lack of consciousness, the escape from the confusion and his blistering anger, he welcomes. But it never lasts. Too soon he’s jerked awake to the raging throb in his skull and the hate that swells in his otherwise empty, empty self. The barrenness of him he feels too much. His insides, void and blown out to hold up the quaking mess of his bones, the ache and disgust at Odin and the rest not filling the hollow cavity that he is, but pushing at its walls and threatening to burst him. Sometimes he thinks it is the thick Jotun skin that holds him together, the raised lines and markings stitches that keep his flesh from rupturing.

He’ll be lying if he says he regrets Midgard, though there is no one here to deceive. No one but himself and he is far too learned in the art of trickery to be able to work it on himself. He doesn’t regret Midgard, this he knows, nor will he ever, but – sometimes he thinks, bitterly, that he would have had things come to anything but this.

Loki doesn’t know how long an Asgardian is supposed to be able to last without food. He wonders for but a moment before his burning skull reminds him that he isn’t Asgardian. And then he’s shaking with the frustration of not knowing a thing about what he is and with the desperation for a morsel to mitigate his aching emptiness.

Well into the second month he starts to hallucinate, and it is this he thinks his eventual visitor at first.

But the firmness of the hands on him are all too real after being so long untouched but by frozen gusts of wind. The warmth of the grip as well and Loki’s eyes, though bleary and unfocused, blow wide with the sensation. His first thought is Frigga, because who else had offered him a gentle look and touch when he’d been dragged before Odin and thrown at his feet – who else had a word to speak on his behalf even as Odin gave deaf ear. But this is not Frigga, he can soon tell, as strong arms lift him, mass of scraping bone and straining skin, to a hard chest. His head lolls back, weighted down by the horns, against the arm that holds him and his next thought is Thor, but that possibility is dismissed quicker than the first. He sighs weakly into his muzzle and lets his eyes fall shut, lacking the energy to care very much who this is or what may happen to him. They can’t do much worse.

“Move away,” snarls the voice close to his head, strong, commanding, vaguely familiar. It dispenses more sharp instructions to what must be guards or servants and then drops to a soft murmur. “Be still, my prince, your torment is over.” The words register faintly and only then does Loki realizes how he is shaking.

He’s carried somewhere and the trip seems eternal, but his bearer is gentle as well as firm and keeps him still as can be. He’s deposited in a bed of alien softness and the muzzle is torn off, healing slices of what he realizes are the precious apples of Idun pushed between his lips. Soft hands rub salves into the broken flesh around his horns and this he is sure is Frigga. Voices hover around him and come and go, a buzz he would do without, absorbing little of it. Thor’s voice he catches, “Can he not be changed back from this form?” and he breaks into a violent fit of coughing, spitting up bile and blood.

Frigga’s tender singing lingers most, his bearer’s growing-familiar murmur frequently joining it. Odin’s voice he does not hear.

A fortnight passes like this before he wakes one day to find his eyes are less bleared, the throb in his head has grown milder and his body feels slightly more solid, enough that he can sit up. His head is still unbearably heavy and he lays still for a moment, contemplating the gilded finery of the chamber – his old bedchamber and oh, but it seems centuries ago that last he was here –  and then the icy blue of his skin, markings clearer now but alien still. A shudder runs through him, involuntary and he shakes his head, shaking it away and turns it to find Frigga.

“Loki,” she says, a faint whisper but brimming with more emotion than he can process. He parts his mouth to speak and the sounds that come out are hoarse, cracked, unintelligible even to himself. “Tell – me,” he croaks out finally. “E – vry – thing.”

She does. “He came here on a simple visit, some task or other on behalf of his realm,” Frigga begins, and Loki knows she means his bearer, and doesn’t prompt her to speak his name, just yet. “And in the course of his stay requested to see you. I know not how much of what happened on Midgard has reached the other realms, but he would not listen to any justification once he – we – learned what was done to you.” She pauses. “Odin had not – we knew not the extent of what he sentenced you to. Not until this blessed son demanded he conjure unto a skrying glass the image of your cell, to assure us – of your – your – well-being.” Her voice wavers and breaks, and Loki stares ahead impassively. “Something – something I should have done long before, but for Odin’s – false – reassurances. Oh, my son.” Her arms wrap around his head, cradle his horns and wet droplets fall onto his scalp. He lies still in her arms and waits for her to go on.

“Odin could not stand in the way of us both,” she continues eventually. “And I have not spoken to him since.”

He nods against her embrace, having heard enough, from her at least. “I wo – ” he rasps out slowly, “would see him.”

“He holds an audience with Odin, now. I believe he will come here unbidden once it is over.”

Loki means to wait but falls back to sleep despite himself. A firm familiar hand rests on his when next he wakes, and he shudders again. Quickly he turns his hand to twine his fingers into his visitor’s, whose other hand reaches out to touch the underside of Loki’s chin and turn his head to him.

They lock eyes, crimson unto gold and before Loki’s bloodred vision lost snatches of memory flash – a glance exchanged across Valaskjalf’s feasting table; yellow-white hair bent over an anvil, smooth voice explaining the working of some gadget; white hands steadying Loki in the heat of an Elf-aided Asgardian battle; bone-pale skin gashed with red beneath Loki’s fingers, he whispering a healing spell; some hundred small moments fleeting and far between, a stretch of centuries compounded now across Loki’s vision at dizzying speed –  something shifts and tightens in his chest. Like a thick but melting fog curling through the emptiness and Loki presses his eyes closed, trying to hang onto it, but it then it is gone.

He feels – not beholden, rather something like it but with a strange want, one that seems – so strange – _not_ impossible, incredibly _within his reach_ and it makes him shy back – overwhelmed. His head pounds again but with a new ache now, and the other man says, “My prince?” And Loki’s head screams _prince the other prince call me nuada my prince then so are you prince of mine silver prince of elves nuada silverlance and i hear they call you silvertongue is it truly I can show you my silver prince_ –

“Silver-blue now,” Nuada smiles and his silver-white hands close on Loki’s wrists. Loki’s eyes blow wide with bewilderment and that bizarre _want_ again. Confused as ever but far beyond caring, he pulls Nuada down over him and groans deep into Nuada’s mouth as it covers his. Unperturbed by the cold, by the horns, by the markings – no, _relishing_ them, Nuada charts him inch for inch and _fills_ the horrible empty void of him in every sense of the word. There is nothing for it for Loki but to gasp for breath after laborious breath and shudder, in _happiness_ of all things.

Loki has ever ached – with anger, with hate, with despair and defeat, with endless confusion and frustration. Nuada brushes pale lips over his ear and murmurs of Odin’s submission to Nuada’s request for Loki to return to Alfheimr with him. “Should you consent, my prince.” A new ache brims in Loki now, threatening to overspill, and it is one for which he might let go of all the others.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I so hope you've enjoyed this :)


End file.
